These days a lot of mail outs and event pamphlets bundle customised USB flash drives in with their pages. Often the intent is to ensure that recipients have access to digital versions of the physical hand outs or perhaps related catalogues. Canadian photographer Justin Poulsen decided to take this concept one step further when he put together his own USB mail campaign.

Unique USB Drives That Are Thumbs

Poulson's art is notable for the way it blends photography with highly detailed props, so when the artist needed to promote himself he came up with an ingenious way that combined pure promotion with his desire to let "potential clients experience both the tactile and visual quality of (his) craft". The result was a series of USB thumb drives moulded directly from his real thumb.

During the moulding process Poulson placed some slim USB drives into the material. Once they popped out of the mould, the thumb drives were the right shape but definitely not the right colour. With crafting props being one of his many skills, Poulson was in his element hand painting each thumb drive until it looked like a highly realistic severed thumb (gross!).

But the kooky severed thumbs weren't ready to be sent out on their own. The artist also put together a fantastic branded mailer pack that contained an hilarious campaign slogan that linked directly to the bundled USBs - "Stick out a like a sore thumb". While I'm not sure exactly what the recipients of these odd mailer bundles thought, I'd probably be a little alarmed if I saw what looked like a severed human thumb in my mailbox! But upon discovering it was a flash drive I'd want to show it off to as many friends as possible. I mean, it's a literal thumb drive - you can't get much more weird and wonderful than that!

Custom USB thumbs first spotted here: http://petapixel.com/2015/01/27/conceptual-photographer-creates-literal-usb-thumb-drives-promo-mailer/